CHECK OUT THE CALENDAR OF EVENTS AND ONLINE ARCHIVES OF THE CHURCH IN THE 21 ST CENTURY The Church in the 21st Century has a full lineup of the lectures, panel discussions and other events at Boston College, and several alumni events around the country, this spring. Keep track of these, and view video and audio recordings of past events by visiting our Web site, www.bc.edu/church2l. the CHURCH in the 2I S T CENTURY

Rebuilding on Faith BY MARY PENCE Being admired for who she was turns a wayward girl hack to community and God At the age of 15, I was a girl who made it difficult for anyone —even myself —to love. My upbringing has been a turbulent ride. There were struggles with anorexia, friends poorly chosen and my parents' divorce. The only positive thing about me was something that I did not earn. I was blessed with a certain look that others found attractive, and in the absence of any other reason to feel good about myself, this one quality achieved preeminence. Most viewed me as just another pretty face, and that is exactly how I viewed myself. I yearned to be accepted socially, and because of my low self-esteem I allowed myself to be manipulated. I defined myself solely by the company I kept, and I felt comfortable only with those who were as damaged as I was. It did not take long for me to become a person whom I disliked and could never respect. The one person who had the power to change a...

Young Adult Catholics: Conservative? Alienated? Suspicious? BY MARY JOHNSON, DEAN R. HOGE, WILLIAM DINGES, AND JUAN L. GONZALES, JR. Catholic young adults are skeptical—but not leaving Catholicism in any great numbers We would be hard pressed to find a Catholic in the United States who does not have an opinion about where young adult Catholics are on their faith journey. Anecdotal evidence abounds. Parents, pastors and teachers tell tales of the religious journeys of their young adult children, parishioners and students. But the listener must beware whenever the storytellers suggest that the road they describe is the one traveled by all young adult Catholics. The task of the social scientist, upon hearing these stories, is to ask: How widespread is this phenomenon? How representative are these accounts? Can we generalize from these cases to the whole population? And when claims are made, social scientists have the responsibility to ask: Where are the data that prove or disprove thes...

Generation-X Catholics Stick to Own Agendas BY TOM BEAUDOIN They are neither as conservative, nor as liberal, as some commentators think Are Gen-X Catholics basically young and conservative? The future of pastoral outreach to this generation depends on a frank answer: Young, yes. Conservative, no. We may be young —in our early 20s to mid-30s —but beyond that single adjective, things get murky pretty fast. In a much-discussed 1997 article in America, Willard Jabusch suggested that Gen-X Catholics—those born in the early '6os to the late '7Os —are largely conservative. From his experience ministering to Xers at the University of Chicago, he described with appropriate adulation those who are discovering classic Catholic authors (like Bonaventure) and inquiring about forgotten Catholic pieties (like the rosary). But Jabusch hints that he is aware of some counter-conservative spiritual currents among Xers. He names these "a strange mix of heterodox opinions about Christ, the Eucharist......

Confessions of a Generation-X Catholic Woman BY RENEE M. LAREAU Feeling a mix of love and aversion, joy and anger toward the Church We sit at the kitchen table in our pajamas, the late morning sun filtering through the windows. The Washington Post lies untouched on the table, along with bagel crumbs and big mugs of tepid, strong coffee. It is New Year's Eve day, and four of us, our college friendships eight years young now, have traveled to Washington, D.C. to spend the long weekend together. A coterie of Catholic-educated Generation Xers, we discuss our burgeoning careers and our emergence into the "real world" as young adults. Sitting around the table are a medical student, a nascent theologian, a nonprofit worker and an engineer—all strong women with strong opinions. We chat sleepily until our conversation shifts to politics and religion. My college roommate says to me, "I don't see how you can be satisfied with life in the Church. The Church has so many problems, and it is hardl...

Adult Faith Formation: Will It Ever Catch On? BY JANE REGAN Catechesis is not just for the young, but few parishes take it seriously enough With growing clarity and insistence, voices within the Church —both official and unofficial—speak repeatedly of the importance of the faith formation of adults to the life and vitality of the Church. Of course, adult faith formation is not a new concern. Most of the ecclesial documents that currently address the topic cite the General Catechetical Directory of 1971, which states that "catechesis for adults must be considered the chief form of catechesis" (No. 20). Most recently, the bishops of the United States approved and published Our Hearts Were Burning Withi?i Us: A Pastoral Plan for Adult Faith Formation in the United States, in which they affirm that adult faith formation must be seen as "the central task in the catechetical enterprise" (No. 5). So if we have been talking about this for over 30 years, why does the vision of vibrant parish...

On Being a Catholic Parent BY TOM MCGRATH A father realizes that his religious faith and his role as a parent are tightly interwoven To explain how my experience as a parent has been a spiritual path, I have to begin seven years before my first child was born. At age 22,1 was feeling more lost in my life than I've ever been before or since. My life was devoid of meaning and more than grim. In my lowest moment I latched onto one bit of Jesus' teaching that I'd learned in Catholic schools and I clutched it as if it were a life raft in a storm-tossed sea. The teaching: "Love one another as I have loved you." With that as my guiding principle, I signed onto work as activities counselor at an orphanage for kids who were wards of the state. I suspect I turned to the work hoping for some kind of escape, but instead I came face to snot-nosed face with life in the form of 16 five- to nine-year-olds. What I found was a life that could have gone either way —drudgery or joy. On any given day, t...

Handing on the Faiths BY MARIANNE COMFORT Interfaith couples face the challenge of practicing and passing on two religious faiths As they gather around the dinner table each evening, the Yala family of Oak Park, Illinois gives thanks to God in both English and Arabic. Dana bows her head and intertwines the fingers of both hands, just as she was taught as a young Catholic. Her husband, Mohamed, keeps his hands open with palms up, as he learned as a Muslim growing up in Algeria. Their daughter follows Dana's example, while their son switches from one form of sitting in prayer to the other. "In that moment every night when we pray together we feel that we incorporate both traditions," says Dana Yala. Such creativity is an important ingredient for successful interfaith marriages, say Catholics married to nonChristians. Increasingly, interfaith couples actively participate in each other's places of worship and celebrate holidays from both faith traditions in their homes. They select symb...

Crisis Highlights Catholicism's Troubled Theology of Children BY ROBERT A. ORSI The absence —or unstable presence —of children in Catholic culture Whatever else the dreadful crisis still unfolding in the American Catholic Church is about—and the news media, the courts, the Church hierarchy in Rome and in the United States, and an increasingly infuriated laity have offered different interpretations—it is fundamentally about children. It is about children's vulnerability to adult power and to adult fantasy in religious contexts and it is about the absence of real children in these settings—real children as opposed to "children" as the projections of adult needs and desires or "children" as extensions of adult religious interiority. The necessary response to the crisis must be about children, too. We must ask: What accounts for the strange doubleness of children in Catholic culture, for their simultaneous presence and absence? There has always been a deep ambivalence in Christianity ab...

Daughter, Dad Tangle Over Religion BY DEAN SARNECKI Conservative Catholic thinker and adult daughter think about their faith together Have you ever received from one of your children a question regarding the existence of God or about God that has stumped you? Have you fallen back on the old "because that is what you are supposed to believe," or, "that is what the Church says," or, even more honestly, "go ask your mother!" I have to admit, both as a parent and a teacher, I am often posed questions that I cannot answer. While I try to avoid evasive answers, I wish I could provide the answer that would lead the questioner to solid faith or at least to lead them to inquire further into their own beliefs. This is somewhat the situation that Michael and Jana Novak found themselves in. However, unlike my children or students, when Jana, a recent college graduate, asked her father, Michael, an eminent Catholic theologian, to answer some deep questions regarding faith, Church and morals, he ...

IN THIS ISSUE Renewal of the Church: the Road Ahead Those with long memories may recall Cardinal Alfredo Ottaviani, a staunch defender of the status quo in the days before the Second Vatican Council, whose episcopal coat of arms proclaimed Semper Idem, "always the same." But an earlier and more famous cardinal, John Henry Newman, had written: "To live is to change, and to be perfect is to have changed often." And Vatican II itself, after some debate, wrote in its Decree on Ecumenism, "In its pilgrimage on earth, Christ summons the Church to that continual reformation of which it is always in need." This fourth issue of C2l Resources focuses on the Church of the future in the U.S. and what kind of change, renewal, or reform is needed in order to get from here to there. The articles reprinted here propose different ways the Church might undertake Newman's challenge without violating Ottaviani's sense of its changeless truth. When BC undertook two years ago the initiative that came to ...

A Plea for Dialogue A Dying Priest's Appeal to the Bishops Two days before his death in August 2003, Rev. Msgr. Philip F. Murnion, founder of the National Pastoral Life Center, sent the following letter to each bishop in the United States. To My Brother in Christ: In his final public address on October 24, 1996, Cardinal Joseph Bernardin spoke these moving words. "A dying person does not have time for the peripheral or the accidental. He or she is drawn to the essential, the important—yes, the eternal. And what is important, my friends, is that we find that unity with the Lord and within the community of faith for which Jesus prayed so fervently on the night before he died." Now, in God's Providence, I too write this reflection as a dying person, with no time for the peripheral or accidental. In many ways the crisis in the Church and the ensuing polarization...have only grown more acute. Your own credibility and ability to guide God's people have been severely compromised, sometimes...

The CHURCH in the 21ST CENTURY C21 RESOURCES EXECUTIVE EDITOR J. A. Apple-yard, S.J., Vice President for University Mission mid Ministry EDITOR Richard Higgins ADVISORY BOARD Ben Birnbaum Patricia M. Chang Patricia De Leeuw Jack Dunn Mary Ami Hinsdale RichardKeeley Robert R. Newton Hallie Sammartino Di Schino Judith Wilt CONSULTING EDITOR John L. Mahoney DESIC N ER Math em Parent Progressive Print Solutions C2l Resources is published by Boston College's Church in the 21st Century initiative, in partnership with the publications in which these articles first appeared. C2l Resources is a compilation of the best analyses and essays on the Chimb's crisis and search for renewal. They are published with the intent of stimulating discussion and thought among bishops, priests, and religious and lay members of the Catholic community.

Facts, Myths, and Questions BY THOMAS J. REESE For those who have been following the sexual abuse crisis in the American Catholic Church since the mid-1980's, the reports by the John Jay College of Criminal Justice and the National Review Board for the Protection of Children and Young People provided confirmation of hunches and the destruction of myths. At the same time, they left many questions unanswered. The myths have been promoted by people on both sides of the debate: those who want to beat up on the Church and those who want to downplay the crisis. But what are the facts reported in this study of sexual abuse in the Church between 1950 and 2002? The beginning, not the end, of research on sexual abuse in the Church. Myth: Less than 1 percent of the clergy are involved in sexual abuse. Fact: 4,392 priests, or 4 percent of the total number of members of the Catholic clergy between 1950 and 2002, have had allegations made against them. Myth: Much of the abuse was not really serio...

Getting in Touch with the Real Facts on Abuse sex, and 25 percent involved penile penetration or attempted penetration. Myth: Most of the abusers were serial offenders. Fact: 56 percent of priests had only one allegation against them. The 149 priests who had more than 10 allegations against them were responsible for abusing 2,960 victims, thus accounting for 27 percent of the allegations. Myth: These offending priests were "dirty old men." Fact: Half the priests were 35 years of age or younger at the time of the first instance of alleged abuse. Myth: Many of the abusive priests had been victims of sexual abuse as children. Fact: Fewer than 7 percent of the priests were reported to have experienced physical, sexual, or emotional abuse as children. Myth: Celibacy caused the sex abuse crisis. Fact: 96 percent of priests (all of them obliged by celibacy) were not involved in sexual abuse. Myth: Homosexuality caused the abuse crisis: Fact: No one knows the exact percentage of priests who...